Virat Kohlis retirement speculations dominate headlines ahead of 3rd IND-AUS ODI in Sydney

New Delhi: With the series out of grasp, India will play for pride in the third and final ODI against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday. Back-to-back losses in Perth and Adelaide inflicted India's fifth series loss against Australia in the last decade.

While the performances of the entire team have merited criticism, Virat Kohli's twin failures have been the biggest topic of discussion among fans and pundits.

After registering successive ducks in ODIs for the first time in his career, Kohli, for once, has been in the spotlight in Australia for all the wrong reasons. Question marks over his performances, technique, ability and future have been raised in the cricketing circles, and his gesture of waving the gloves towards fans after dismissal in Adelaide has added fuel to the fire of his retirement from international cricket.

Already retired from Tests and T20Is, Kohli and Rohit's selection for the Australia ODIs was a big topic of discussion. With age not on their side, the future of both Kohli and Rohit and their chances of playing in the 2027 ODI World Cup, are not certain and dependent on their form and performances.

While Rohit, who was replaced as India's ODI skipper by Shubman Gill in the ongoing series, silenced the cricketers with a gritty knock of 73 in Adelaide, Kohli attracted more scrutiny following the successive ducks.

Anything he does or even doesn't is being linked to his future. Former cricketers, pundits and fans have all jumped into the debate, fuelling the retirement speculations ahead of the Sydney ODI.

From R Ashwin's 'Just Leave It' post to Parthiv Patel's "sydney it is" post, every message is being linked with Kohli's retirement speculations. 

Meanwhile, former India opener and captain Sunil Gavaskar has told the fans not to read too much into Kohli's gloves gesture in Adelaide and defended the Delhi batter.

"Look, the man has more than 14,000 runs, 52 ODI centuries, and I think 32 Test centuries. He's scored thousands and thousands of runs, so he's allowed a couple of failures. Don't read too much into what has happened - there's plenty of cricket left, plenty of cricket ahead. Maybe Sydney will see a big innings from him. Adelaide, of course, has been his favourite ground in Australia, both at the Test level and in ODIs. He's scored hundreds there, so naturally, everyone was expecting a big one here as well. But that didn't quite happen," Gavaskar told Sports Tak.